Food

Health care organizations nationwide are offering healthier menus, working with farmers to purchase locally and sustainably grown products, reducing the amount of meat they purchase and serve, and going beyond their walls to help meet the food needs of their community, all in an effort to achieve major goals for both the facility and the surrounding community such as:

Improving the nutritional value of food available to patients, employees, and visitors that will also improve their overall health.

Increasing access to healthy food options for the community, as a lack of secure food sources can be a major factor affecting physical health and emotional well-being.

Building an environmentally sustainable food system for the long-term benefits of the communities they serve.

Hospital food is more than meals served in the cafeteria and on patient trays. It represents an integral part of health care’s ability to improve the health of patients, staff, and the surrounding community.

Community leaders, hospitals, and health care providers have a unique opportunity to develop programs that aim to reverse negative food- and health-related trends by:

Modeling healthier, more sustainable food choices for patients, employees, and visitors while also saving money by reducing food waste and stewarding natural resources.

Maximizing hospital purchasing power to increase the availability of local, sustainable foods within the hospital and by extension, in the community.

Leveraging programming and investments to address social and environmental determinants of health by increasing healthy food access for patients, staff and visitors while also building healthy, sustainable and equitable food systems for their communities.

Practice Greenhealth has developed tools and resources to help our members plan, create, and implement healthier food programs that can be tailored to meet the goals of any hospital organization.

Hackensack University Medical Center: Better meat case study

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Practice Greenhealth is the health care sector’s go-to source for information, tools, data, resources, and expert technical support on sustainability initiatives that help hospitals and health systems meet their health, financial, and community goals.